Orphans On A Train: The Orphan Boy Separated From His Friend

By Beth Overton

A nine-year-old boy is fostered by a farmer and his wife when the Orphan Train from Missouri reaches California. He lucks out and finds that his foster parents are kind and thoughtful and loving Christians, while unfortunately, his friend’s foster parent is not. It all comes to a head when the boy sees his friend again for the first time.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Beth Overton
• Release date: Feb 8, 2016
• ISBN: 9781311509796

Beth Overton

Beth Overton lives in Northern California with her husband and three cats. Besides writing romances, she loves to read everything she can get her hands on, as well as cooking up gourmet delights for her entire family.

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Orphans On A Train: The Orphan Boy Separated From His Friend

By

Beth Overton

Copyright 2016 Quietly Blessed & Loved Press

Synopsis: A nine-year-old boy is fostered by a farmer and his wife when the Orphan Train from Missouri reaches California. He lucks out and finds that his foster parents are kind and thoughtful and loving Christians, while unfortunately, his friend’s foster parent is not. It all comes to a head when the boy sees his friend again for the first time, but doesn’t know how to tell his own caretakers about the situation.

Jason was cold, tired, and hungry. He tried to pull his thin sweater closer around his bony shoulders in hopes that it would make the garment provide a little more warmth for his slight frame. Jason was nine years old, but he was much older than his years. He was an orphan, living on the streets of St. Louis in 1856. He had been on the streets for almost a year and he knew the ropes, still, some days he wished he had a ma, or a pa, and a home to go to.

Jason had once had a ma, he did not know much about his pa because he had died when Jason was just a baby. His ma had supported Jason and herself by cleaning for other people. She had gotten up long before daylight every morning and started cleaning, and she did not get to stop until after it was dark.

She did not make very much money, but the lady who owned the boarding house that she worked for allowed her to have a little room in the basement and allowed Jason to stay with her as long as Jason made no noise and did not disturb the other people. The lady even let Jason and his mother have some of the leftovers after dinner in exchange for Jason hauling off the scraps and keeping the kindling box next to the stove filled with kindling.

Jason had never known any other life so to him that existence was normal. He did not long for other things, except sometimes when he saw children in the street playing kick the can, Jason would long to join them, but his mother always said that he was to stay in the room until after supper when he went to the kitchen to eat and to fill the wood box.

One day Jason’s mother had started to cough. At first she coughed a little, then as the weeks went past she coughed more and more. Finally, she started to cough up blood when she coughed. It scared Jason to see the blood on her handkerchief when she coughed.

His mother was very weak and tired but she got up every day and did her work so that she and Jason would have a place to lie down that night. This continued for several months and then one morning Jason woke up and his mother was still lying beside him in the bed.

At first Jason thought this was nice, because his mother was very rarely around, but then Jason realized that his mother’s body was cold and he could not hear her labored breathing. Jason knew that his mother was dead. His little heart had been broken and his first instinct had been to run and hide.

Jason had heard horrible stories about orphanages and homes that children with no parents had to go live in. He knew that since his mother died he was going to be put into one of those homes and he had run away.

Jason had learned very quickly to hide behind buildings and to eat from the trashcans behind places like the boarding house. After a few weeks he had found a building on Seventh Avenue that had a woodshed, but there was no wood being kept in the shed. The boy had started going to that woodshed each evening and sleeping there. There was a cover over the shed so the dew did not fall on the boy and it provided him some shelter from rain, sleet snow, and the likes.

During